General practitioners are not family physicians in the US. The distinction is important for patient care, research, reporting and health policy. Read the new research that documents the important differences.
http://www.annfammed.org/content/18/2/127
A fresh approach to mentoring can empower new researchers to focus research questions with personal passion to create successful studies and sustainable careers. https://doi.org/10.22454/FamMed.2018.952474
Just published, this Special Article outlines how mentors can use the Pursuing Personal Passion P3 Learner-Centered Mentoring Model to help new researchers overcome the common challenges of finding and focusing research questions.
Mentors can use the P3 Interview tool to help researchers identify their key concerns and focus their interests into researchable questions that are aligned with their personal and professional priorities.
Built on the foundations of learner-centered teaching and patient-centered care, the P3 Mentoring Model can help researchers organize their curiosity into researchable questions, successful studies and organized programs of scholarship.
The P3 Mentoring Model is particularly helpful for:
Download the complete article for free. Share with mentors and mentees. Post your comment.
William R. Phillips, MD, MPH, is Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine, University of Washington, and was recognized by the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) with its 2018 Distinguished Research Mentor Award.
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A family physician reflects on his own experience with open-heart surgery and the process of care in a top-flight academic medical center.
I am running on a treadmill. Perhaps you are, too. Your treadmill may be meeting productivity goals for patient visits, building a successful academic career or balancing work and family. Mine is a real treadmill, the kind that gets faster and steeper every three minutes. read more…
Excerpts
“It seems that the patient, the document and the clinician are growing apart.”
“…Delegation is replacing integration in our patient histories, and format is winning over content in our records.”
“Physicians and nurses now touch the keyboard more than they touch the patient.”
“…The documentation imperative now drives the clinical encounter.”
“The map is not the territory and the medical record is not the patient, even when it is on a computer.”
“If communication, touch and healing are to be part of our “best practices,” then we need to continue the search for ways to make the patient the focus of patient-centered care.”
“As we move our practices to team-based care, we need to make sure the patient sees and feels that the care team is real and that the team really cares.”
“When we work in teams we must be sure that, along with efficiencies, come feelings.”
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Copyright © 2013 W.R. Phillips
Originally published in:
Phillips WR. The Heart of the Matter. Washington Family Physician. 2013; 40(4):12-13.
Used with permission.
William R. Phillips
Some days I want to curse infernal
Invention of the learned journal.
Filling miles of lonely shelves
To busy wee indexing elves;
Inform, inspire, but oft instead
Stay still in stacks; lie long unread;
Consuming forests full of trees,
For tenure and advanced degrees.
Periodic publications,
Scholarship, pontifications,
Research, reports, and recent news,
Opinion, ads, and book reviews;
A journal though, when at its best,
Serves scientific minds in quest;
Circulates the world by mail,
And on electrons now can sail.
Authors pack in fact and finding,
Weaving words in weary winding.
Editors can polish prose,
But what it means God only knows.
In each paper lies a kernel
Seeking light, like truth eternal.
William R. Phillips
(Apologies to Joyce Kilmer and his poem, “Trees,” Published in Trees and Other Poems, London: George H. Doran Company; 1914.)
Read the Poem as originally published.
Copyright © 2003 William R. Phillips. Originally appeared in: Phillips WR. Science Editor. 2003;26(5) :173. (September-October)
In our dedication to the underserved, has family medicine left the mainstream where we used to provide most of the care to most of the folks most of the time?
Family medicine has been swimming upstream for so long that we are leaving the mainstream behind. We are battling up tributaries, into the mountains and valleys. At the same time we are becoming an endangered species in the lakes and ocean where we used to populate the big waters, feed entire peoples and sustain healthy ecosystems.
Excerpts
“Family medicine has devoted so much of its energy to the needs of the underserved that we no longer meet the needs of the larger population.”
“… the Paradox of Primary Care Privilege: only the underprivileged have the privilege of having family doctors.”
“Everyone deserves to have a family doctor.”
“We need to establish caring relationships with people in power as well as with people in need.”
“If family practice doesn’t succeed in the cities, it won’t survive in the sticks.”
“… the irresistible power created by diversity, adversity, and unity.”
Please comment and share.
Copyright © 2013 W.R. Phillips
Used with permission. Originally published in:
Phillips WR. Swimming Upstream. Washington Family Physician. 2012. 39(1):18-19.
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